AUSTRALIANS AT WAR

THE NEW AMERICAN CENTURY is a compelling factual history of neoconservatism and its influence on US Foreign Policy in the Middle East during the first decade of the twenty-first century. Click on image above for details.

Saturday, August 31, 2013

US Secretary of State John Kerry has said that, having considered the evidence presented in a Government Assessment released yesterday, the US will punish the Syrian government for its alleged use of chemical weapons in Damascus on 21 August 2013.

The US government has taken it upon itself to act as judge, jury and executioner over the Syria gassings. It asserts that the Government Assessment represents all the evidence it needs to justify ‘punishing’ the Syrian government despite the fact that the UN inspection team has not yet delivered its report and the mounting evidence that the gassings was perpetrated by rebel forces, possibly accidentally. In producing the assessment, the government has used spurious evidence, including highly dubious information from Israeli intelligence sources that claims to have intercepted communications between Syrian commanders relating to the gassings.

The US must allow justice to takes its course in the international courts of law and not rush to be judge, jury and executioner for its ally Israel. Clearly a crime has been committed since women and children are dead. The UN inspectors need to confirm that gas was used and then the crime should be fully investigated to determine who was actually responsible. Those responsible then need to be arrested and tried for their crimes – regardless of who they are.

Kerry’s transparent rush to war on behalf of Israel using the gassings as a pretext could, in itself, be a crime – especially if it is found that Kerry lied about what the government is presenting as evidence and knowing that the alternative evidence was more compelling.

Kerry’s rhetoric is extremely subjective and the language clearly designed as propaganda at a time when it needs to be clear and objective when discussing such serious matters as war crimes involving mass gassings.

The world should be – and is – protesting America’s rush to war for Israel.

Thursday, August 29, 2013

In a recent article in Politico, Anna Palmer pondered the question of why the Israel lobby is silent on Syria. After having spoken with a number of pro-Israel activists representing pro-Israeli organisations like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and the American Jewish Committee (AJC) she reports that most have kept quiet about the events in Syria for two main reasons: one is the uncertainty of what is going on in Syria and, two, not wanting to seem in any way influential about US foreign policy relating to affairs in the Middle East – especially after the disastrous invasion of Iraq which was strongly supported by most Israeli lobby groups on the basis that Saddam supported the Palestinian cause during the Second Intifada and had WMDs likely to be used against Israel.

Meanwhile, at Commentary online magazine, lead neocon propagandist Jonathan Tobin attempts to spin that the pro-Israeli groups in the US, better known as the Israel Lobby (‘so-called’ as Tobin would have it), don’t have a vested interest in the outcome of the Syrian war because, regardless of who wins, it will not, he says, be in Israel’s interests. He denies that the pro-Israeli organisations are not trying to keep a low profile for any nefarious reasons that they could take advantage of or that they are worried about public opinion if they supported intervention against al-Assad.

The reality, which Palmer has ignored and which Tobin would vehemently deny, is that the Israeli Zionists, including the neocons and those in AIPAC, the AJC and the other pro-Israeli organisations are hoping that the war in Syria where al-Assad is supported by Hezbollah and Iran, will spill out into Lebanon which will then provide Israel with an opportunity to attack Hezbollah. Further escalation may then even involve an attack against Iran by either Israel and/or the US.

Israel will play its usual game of provocation such as IDF incursions into Lebanon, drone flights over Lebanon, low level strike jet overflights into Lebanese airspace, shootings of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, etc., in the hope of provoking retaliation from the Palestinians and Hezbollah that would justify a full on attack against both. A US and allied attack against Syria might also provoke retaliatory attacks against Israel that would also justify Israeli action.

But, of course, none of this is likely to be talked about openly by Zionist Israelis or their representative Israel Lobby organisations are they? Hence the silence.

The scene is almost set for what could possibly become the final confrontation that Israel and her Western allies have long been waiting for. Again, I hope I’m wrong but, this time it seems far more likely than ever before.

*Look out for my book; The New American Century: Neoconservatives and Their Influence on US Foreign Policy in the Middle East, 2000-2010, which explains, with over 1200 supportive notations, exactly how and why affairs in the Middle East have been manipulated for the benefit of Zionist Israel.

Tuesday, August 27, 2013

United Nations spokesman Martin Nesirky has been reported as saying that the mandate of the UN inspectors in Damascus investigating last weeks gas attacks is only to determine if chemical weapons were used; not who used them. Clearly, chemical weapons have been used and few doubt it but, while it is important that the evidence of such use is collected and examined, surely it would be equally important for the inspectors to gather evidence that might determine who had used these weapons. Apart from anything else, such evidence would be essential when prosecuting those responsible when they are captured and charged with war crimes – regardless of who they are.

One should also be reminded that the rebels had tried this false flag gas attack scenario before when they launched an attack using sarin gas against the Syrian town of Aleppo in March this year. They tried to blame the Syrian government for that as well even though some of the casualties were Syrian soldiers.

The US and their allies seem to have already made up their minds about who was responsible for the latest attack, despite mounting evidence to the contrary, and are awaiting only confirmation that chemical weapons were indeed used before launching an all-out attack against Syria.

Monday, August 26, 2013

Despite the Syrian government acceding to UN demands to allow their inspectors into the areas affected by last weeks gas attack on civilians, the US has declared that it is ‘too little, too late’ saying that it may now be “too late to gather useful scientific results”.

Given the seriousness of the accusations, the inspectors should at least be given the opportunity of making some kind of assessment about who was responsible before the US and their NATO allies escalate the war to levels which may have much wider consequences.

The language being used indicates that the US and their allies might, however, launch an attack against the Syrian government before the inspectors are able to determine who exactly was responsible for the gassings.

Israel, meanwhile, is gearing up for war in anticipation of a retaliatory attack against them in the event of an attack against Syria. Given that Israel will be being briefed by the US about their plans for Syria and possibly Iran, it may well be that Israel will launch a pre-emptive attack against Hezbollah in Lebanon and possibly Hamas in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank while the US bombs Syria and Iran into capitulation.

Cooler heads hopefully will prevail and a major war engulfing the entire region will be averted but, the way it’s looking at this moment in time and given the rhetoric from the US and Israel together with the British and French, it seems that the entire region is on the brink of a calamitous war; the final confrontation that Israel has been seeking for years.

It seems the momentum towards escalated war in Syria is shifting from ‘crossing a red line’ to having ‘crossed a red line’ where ‘red line’ has become a euphemism for the point at which the US military will intervene against president Bashir al-Assad.

The ‘red line’, in the case of the Syrian civil war, is the use of chemical weapons against civilians by government forces. In the latest incident Syrian rebels have accused the government of using the weapons, an accusation the government strenuously denies saying they have proof that rebels have been manufacturing chemical weapons and claiming that they have found chemicals for making weapons in rebel tunnels. The UN, the US and their Western allies have demanded that UN inspectors be given access to the affected areas, a demand that the Syrian government acceded to. UN inspectors will arrive at the site on Monday.

If the UN inspectors report that gas had been used against civilians and that Syrian government forces had been responsible then the US and their allies will either intervene militarily against al-Assad or, more likely, threaten al-Assad with the use of devastating force if he did not step down immediately. However, proving conclusively that the government was responsible may well take some time. Furthermore, none of the allied powers have said what action will be taken if the inspectors find that chemical weapons have indeed been used but not by the government, but instead by the rebels.

Recent secret talks between senior US military personnel and Israeli defence and government personnel have clearly been about making contingency plans for dealing with any escalation that may arise from the war in Syria. Since these plans had been put in place just prior to an event that may trigger activation of those plans, one might ponder whether or not the entire scenario for escalation has been spontaneous or contrived – which begs the question: who exactly did use the chemical weapons in Syria that seems to have initiated this series of events?

The question one needs to ask is: who would gain from the use of chemical weapons knowing what the likely outcome would be? Certainly not al-Assad. A US intervention will be the end of al-Assad and his regime. The rebels may have used them in a false flag attack in the hope that al-Assad will be blamed resulting in US intervention but then, if it were discovered that they had used them, those responsible, regardless of who they are, will be liable for arrest and face accusations of war crimes. And any post-civil war government will always be under a cloud of suspicion for having used chemical weapons against their own people.

There is a third alternative. The crime may have been perpetrated by an entity which doesn’t care for either side in Syria’s civil war in order to continue its own war against its perceived enemies.

Sunday, August 25, 2013

In an interview with CNN yesterday President Obama, using non-explicit language, hinted that the US, while being ‘gravely concerned’ about the gassing incident in Syria late last week, would unlikely be taking any action until the facts on the ground had been established. He further indicated that he would await the outcome of the UN mission to the affected area though did not expect the Syrian government to be co-operative in allowing UN inspectors into the area. However, the Syrian government has since indicated that it would be facilitating the UN into the area.

If UN inspectors are able to get into the area, it will take some time before they are able to provide a report the UN Security Council (UNSC). Obama is unlikely to launch any attacks against the Syrian government or its forces before having a report from the UN inspectors.

By the time the inspectors have been able to do their work and make their report Australia will have taken over the chair of the UNSC due on 1 September 2013 which is why Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has interrupted his election campaign to be briefed on the matter.

In the CNN interview Obama hinted the American people are reluctant to get into another war. He said:

…what I think the American people also expect me to do as president is to think through what we do from the perspective of, what is in our long-term national interests? And, you know, I -- you know, sometimes what we've seen is that folks will call for immediate action, jumping into stuff, that does not turn out well, gets us mired in very difficult situations, can result in us being drawn into very expensive, difficult, costly interventions that actually breed more resentment in the region.

He also went on to indicate that he would prefer a UN mandate to take action saying:

…you know, if the U.S. goes in and attacks another country without a U.N. mandate and without clear evidence that can be presented, then there are questions in terms of whether international law supports it, do we have the coalition to make it work, and, you know, those are considerations that we have to take into account.

Getting a UN mandate to attack is unlikely to be supported by the UNSC since Russia and China will likely both use their power of veto to block it.

There are also some serious doubts about who actually did launch the chemical weapons attack. Besides strenuously denying responsibility, Syria would have absolutely nothing to gain for launching a chemical weapons attack against civilians knowing that it would be ‘crossing a red line’ set by the US. Indeed, the reality is that it is far more likely to have been a false flag attack by extremist rebels anxious to get the US involved. Furthermore, as I recently wrote, US military intervention would not be in Israel’s interest either.

Friday, August 23, 2013

Judging by the carefully worded statement by Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr, who oversees Australia’s chairmanship of the UN Security Council (UNSC) beginning next month, the US has already decided not to take any action against the Syrian government over its apparent use of chemical weapons against civilians recently.

Foreign Minister Carr was reported in The Australian as having called on China and Russia, Syria’s two major allies, to call on Syria to tell them that they are “crossing a red line”. The wording is diplomatically important here. Carr hasn’t said the Syrians had “crossed a red line” but are “crossing a red line”; a subtle but critically important difference.

To say that the Syrians had ‘crossed a red line’ would imply that military action, as per US President Obama’s controversial promise of August 2012, would now be taken. Since Australia, as well as taking over the chair of the UNSC in little over a week’s time, is also one of America’s closest allies, Foreign Minister Carr would not have said anything to the Chinese or the Russians relating to Syria without first having consulted the US administration at the highest levels. It is reasonable to presume, therefore, that the US will not be taking action against Syria if it is found that Syria indeed had used chemical weapons against civilians but was only ‘crossing a red line’ rather than having actually ‘crossed a red line’.

This, in turn, then prompts the question; why are the US so reluctant to intervene in Syria’s civil war?

The answer is simple. It is because no matter who wins the war, the outcome will not be in Israel’s interests. For Israel it’s a matter of ‘heads, they win; tails we lose’. The answer now is for there to be a ceasefire and a negotiated peace. If the two sides slug it out to the end there will be countless more dead and possibly another year or two of war. If the US and their allies intervene then it is very likely that Islamists will dominate any new government after al-Assad is defeated which could then lead to continued fighting between Islamists and secularists as they vie for power. Either way, if the US intervenes, it will be the end of al-Assad – and big problems for Israel with jihadists on their doorstep itching to take back the Golan Heights.

One wonders why, from the West’s point of view, the US and their allies didn’t intervene while there was still an opportunity to do so at a time when the revolt was dominated by secularists before the jihadi fighters joined them and virtually took over the fight.

I find it very difficult to believe that one guard would be left alone in the back of a truck to look after 38 prisoners. And, even if it happened they way the Egyptian authorities tell it, then what happened to the guard and how come he get out of the truck and the prisoners didn’t?

Saturday, August 17, 2013

The responsibility for the recent bombing attack in Beirut clearly designed to target Hezbollah, has been claimed by a hitherto unheard of group calling itself the ‘Battalions of Ayesha’.

The usually reliable news organisation UPI reported that Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah had blamed Israel for the attack on the basis that it was in retaliation for last weeks explosions that injured four Israeli soldiers that had sneaked into Lebanon on a reconnaissance patrol. However, the BBC has reported that Nasrallah had blamed ‘Sunni Muslim militants’ for the blast seemingly contradicting the UPI report.

Thursday, August 15, 2013

Neoconservative propagandist Jonathan Tobin writing in Commentary writing about the massacre yesterday of supporters of ousted Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi, told his readers that: “Brutal though the attack on these encampments was, the notion that it could have been accomplished by more pacific methods is probably absurd”.

Tobin goes on to write:

Egypt’s current leaders understand something that President Obama and his foreign policy advisors never have: the struggle in Egypt has always been a zero-sum game in which the choices are reduced to the military or the Brotherhood.

For Tobin, if it’s a choice between the democratically elected Islamist parties, headed up by the Muslim Brotherhood, or an Egyptian military-dominated dictatorship, then Tobin will opt for the dictatorship – provided, of course, that it keeps the peace with Israel.

And therein lays neoconservatism’s true agenda. Only governments in the region that tolerate Israel’s expansionist aspirations are acceptable to the neocons. Democratically elected governments in the region that remain unfriendly toward Israel will soon find themselves either ousted from power or not recognised -just as Hamas were in 2006 and just as Morsi was in 2013.

I’ve asked this question before back when the Egyptian revolution was getting underway in late January 2011. An Israeli invasion then was thwarted when the interim government that followed the ousting of President Hosni Mubarak gave assurances to Israel that they would be honouring the peace agreements made between the two countries in 1979. After the elections of June 2012 that saw President Mohamed Morsi come to power, the Israelis were again quickly reassured by letters from the new president that he too would be honouring the 1979 peace agreements. However, despite the assurances, Morsi did little to stop the growing relationship that was developing between militants in the Sinai and fighters in the Gaza Strip. As a result it’s now fairly clear that the US and Israel had collaborated with the Egyptian military to overthrow the democratically elected Muslim Brotherhood government of President Mohamed Morsi in order to quell the growing resurgence of co-operation between Arab fighters in the Egyptian Sinai and Palestinian fighters in the Gaza Strip.

Hand in hand with the developments in the Sinai there was also a growing enthusiasm among Islamic activists anxious to fight in a pan-Islamic regional jihad triggered by events in Syria that had the potential to engulf Israel in the north from Syria via the Golan Heights and the Sinai in the south.

However, it seems the Egyptian army have misread the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood. While the demonstrations against Morsi prior to the coup against him were large, the demonstrations protesting his overthrow have been even larger – and the reaction to them by the interim government has been brutal.

This, coupled with yesterday’s brutal crackdown on pro-Morsi protestors across Egypt which has seen scores if not hundreds killed and many more likely as the government declares a state of emergency, will likely enrage jihadi activists which could trigger massive civil unrest that in turn could lead to all-out civil war exactly as it did in Syria.

A civil war on the African side of the Suez is bad enough for the Israelis, but the risk of it spilling over into the Sinai east across the Suez would be intolerable for the Israelis who may feel compelled to invade the Sinai, or at least eastern Sinai, in order to secure its borders and isolate Gaza Strip fighters from enjoining the unrest by taking over full control of the tunnels on the Sinai side. The Israelis may even consider launching a full invasion of the Gaza Strip – especially if Gaza fighters begin to launch rockets against Israel.

With the events in Egypt pointing toward civil unrest at best and civil war at worst together with the civil war in Syria and talks between Israel and the Palestinians looking like they are doomed before they even get underway, the situation generally throughout the region and with Netanyahu saying that Iran is his top priority, the future is looking worse for the entire Middle East than it has been for a very long time.

Wednesday, August 14, 2013

Without America’s support, Israel in all likelihood would not by now exist and, without the neoconservatives, there would in all likelihood be no American support for Israel.

The interests of Israel have always been neoconservatism’s primary concern and it has been American neoconservatives that have lobbied the hardest to ensure American support for Israel. They have done this by integrating themselves into all levels of American society where they can be of influence including in government, public service, academia, political and social commentary, journalism, and think-tank organisations. Most but not all neoconservatives are, not unsurprisingly, Jewish and most of those that are Jewish hold dual citizenship with Israel despite many of them having no connection to Israel other than actually being Jewish. (All Jews throughout the Diaspora have ‘right of return’ to Israel even if they or generations of their ancestors have no connection to Israel – unlike Palestinians, who were forced from their lands in order to make way for Jews migrating to Israel after WW2, who have no right of return.)

While neoconservative ideology predominately revolves around the interests of Israel, there are other interwoven ideas that neoconservatives have developed that have been designed to secure support from conservative Americans. One of the ideas taken up by neocons has been the notion of ‘America Exceptionalism’ which, in it’s neoconservative incarnation, promotes American nationalism and the American system of democracy and capitalism and holds these values up as being values that all the world, particularly the Middle East, should aspire to.

While neoconservatism for many remains a somewhat vague ideological concept, there are certain characteristics that are common to all neoconservatives and at the top of the list of those characteristics are: an unswerving loyalty to expansionist Zionism and the concept of a Greater Israel in which Arabs have no place. For some neoconservatives this is quite explicit but for most neoconservatives, particularly in the commentariat, the notion of a Greater Israel is presented only vaguely and usually only by inference. Neoconservatives prominent in government will, as a matter of policy, deny that Israel has any expansionist dreams. One, however, only needs to look at the quickly diminishing map of areas of the West Bank that are available to Palestinians and the growth of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and the already annexed Golan Heights to see the reality of Zionist dreams.

Israel’s modus operandi for realising its expansionist dreams is simple: Provoke Palestinians and Arabs in a myriad of small ways that don’t make headlines and then, when the Palestinians or Arabs retaliate, ensure that the retaliation makes the headlines around the world and pretend to be the victim thus justifying a militarily response which may include occupation and then retreat when things quieten down again giving the impression that occupation is only for ‘security purposes’, not territorial gain. This strategy of three steps forward and two steps back is played out over a long time until eventually there is a big enough war to justify permanent occupation, as in the West Bank, and eventual annexation, as in the Golan Heights.

After their success in the Golan Heights but failures in south Lebanon in the 1980s and again in 2006, the Zionists changed tack. They realise now that only a massive threat to their security can justify occupation. For the Israelis, the bigger the threat the better from now on – and there can be no bigger threat than an enemy nation threatening to ‘wipe you off the map with their nuclear weapons’. And Israel have no better ally than the neocons to perpetuate the myth of Iran ‘wiping Israel off the map with nuclear weapons’ thus providing the ultimate threat by which Israel, forever the victim, can react.

By attacking Iran, Israel hopes that the resulting turmoil created in a quickly escalating war that will drag in the US will provide enough cover for Israel to deal with all of its enemies including Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Hezbollah in Lebanon and any resistance in the West Bank. Israel will use such circumstances to massively occupy all of these places on a more permanent basis using the war to deport Palestinians out of the Gaza into the Sinai and possibly out of the West Bank into Jordan. Meanwhile, the Israelis will leave it to the Americans to effect ‘regime change’ in Iran and Syria. Egypt will be both threatened if it tries to intervene and rewarded financially by the US if it co-operates. Judging by the latest events in the Sinai, it seems the current Egyptian government that overthrew the elected Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi has opted to co-operate with Israel.

It is the neoconservatives who are driving the wars in the Middle East – and, while Americans are expected to pay for it, it is all only in Israel’s interests. And, in the end, it will be the people of the Middle East that suffer – Jews and Arabs alike – regardless of who wins or loses.

Friday, August 09, 2013

The neoconservatives are going to extraordinary lengths to try and convince the world (and probably themselves) that ‘al Qaeda’ is a huge complex homogeneous business organisation that deals in ‘terrorism’ through various franchise organisations scattered throughout the Middle East, Central Asia and Africa.

In a recent article by neocon writers Josh Rogin and Eli Lake in The Daily Beast it was actually claimed that the leaders of the various ‘franchises’ around the world held a conference call to plan acts of terrorism. According to the report from Rogin and Lake we are supposed to believe that up to 20 ‘al Qaeda’ franchise managers were in on the conference call – a call which ultimately led to the US and some of their allies shutting down embassies in the Middle East and elsewhere. What led the participants of the conference to believe that their calls were not being monitored remains unexplained by the writers and their sources.

According to Rogin and Lake, participants included:

…representatives or leaders from Nigeria’s Boko Haram, the Pakistani Taliban, al Qaeda in Iraq, al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, and more obscure al Qaeda affiliates such as the Uzbekistan branch. Also on the call were representatives of aspiring al Qaeda affiliates such as al Qaeda in the Sinai Peninsula… The presence of aspiring al Qaeda affiliates operating in the Sinai was one reason the State Department closed the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv, according to one U.S. intelligence official. “These guys already proved they could hit Eilat. It’s not out of the range of possibilities that they could hit us in Tel Aviv,” the official said.

US intelligence official? ‘… hit us in Tel Aviv’? Surely a slip of the tongue; tell me he meant Washington.

The consensus in Israel – and backed by neoconservatives in the US – seems to be that the recently elected new president of Iran, Hassan Rouhani, despite being a far more conciliatory and far less confronting leader than the previous president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is nonetheless as dangerous as Ahmadinejad inasmuch that he is still, according to the Zionists, pursuing nuclear weapons.

It should be made quite clear, however, as I have explained in the past, there is absolutely no way Israel could truly attack Iran ‘unilaterally’. The US still has a forceful presence in the Persian Gulf which will no be idle if Israel attacks Iran and Iran retaliates.

Once again Israel grows nervous and impatient. The situation to their north-west is volatile with it looking increasingly likely that, no matter who wins in Syria, they will be Israel’s enemies. War with Iran would allow Israel to attack Syria’s Bashir al-Assad as well as any Islamic jihadist groups that try to usurp Syria’s secular opposition powerbase when it attempts to take over power from al-Assad. In doing so, Israel may also be obligated to take on Hezbollah as an ally of both Iran and Syria and possibly even Hamas in the Gaza Strip just for good measure. These have all been the Zionists long term plans for years; all part of realising their long-held dreams of creating a Greater Israel at the expense of the Palestinian and Arab people. It’s not about ‘Iran’s nuclear weapons’; it’s about regime change, US regional hegemony and Israeli dominance in their Greater Israel.

Last week the US and some of their allies shut up diplomatic shop in various places through North Africa and the Middle East due to a threat heard on the ‘al Qaeda’ grapevine that a big attack was being planned for the end Ramadan.

It seems now that the panic is over. The Guardian reports that the US on Wednesday carried out a number of drone strikes that apparently killed seven ‘al Qaeda’ operatives of the ‘al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula’ (AQAP) franchise who had reportedly been planning to attack various towns and oil installations in south Yemen.

The stories of ‘terrorist chatter about major attacks’ remains just stories. The subsequent publicity resulting from the shutdown of embassies throughout the region gave the stories the feel of imminent catastrophic terrorism – all of which is fed to the people of the world without an iota of any evidence to support the stories.

Do you feel safer now? Does the idea of drones roaming the skies over our planet killing America’s enemies at the whim of its President make you feel more secure? Are you happy to lose your right to privacy and judicial process in exchange for feeling safe from an Islamist in the Yemen who has been enraged by the deaths of family or friends by an errant drone missile?

If you do, then the latest propaganda exercise brought to you by the US government has worked. I you don’t feel safer and, indeed, more sceptical, then fear not; there will always be more threats to come to help convince you.

Wednesday, August 07, 2013

Ever wondered why Murdoch’s Australian minion, Andrew Bolt, is so anti-renewable energy? Have you wondered why he’s so anti-Carbon tax and why he’s a climate change denialist? We all know why he’s anti-boatpeople and against respecting the rights and heritage of Aboriginal people and demeaning of African and Islamic people – it’s because he’s a racist, but do you know why he’s so anti-green energy and generally such an avid anti-environmentalist?

The problem with non-renewable energy resources – apart from polluting our atmosphere as it gets used and being… well, non-renewable, as in; once its gone, its gone; that’s it, there’s no more – is the fact that the non-renewable resources industry is dominated by big money, and I mean really big money. In fact, the amounts of money we’re talking about are so huge that those who benefit from it are prepared to do anything to protect their interests in it. In fact, they are so intent on protecting their interests in it they are prepared to go to war for it.

However, they also have other ways of protecting their interests.

Going to war is not too much of a problem for those at the very top end of the non-renewable resources business, afterall, they don’t actually have to pay for the war; the blood and treasure that pays for war comes from ordinary people. But then, how do you get ordinary people to do that?

Well, that’s where people like Bolt come into it. They’re propagandists. Their job is to persuade you to support their interests. Their job is to influence public opinion to the point that the public will support their interests and support actions that protect their interest.

War, though, is not always an option. People won’t accept the idea of simply paying for and dying for a war that only makes the rich richer. There has to be an ulterior motive that the propagandists can work on in order to persuade the people to support such a war – retaliation for an attack against your country or a tyrant to topple. The propagandist’s art is to make it seem as though war and the reasons for war are spontaneous when in fact they are well planned prior to the events. For example, did you know that the US planned to attack the Taliban government of Afghanistan well before 9/11? And did you know that the neoconservatives backed by big oil interests had been looking for an excuse to get into Iraq ever since the first Gulf War?

Propagandists like Bolt were there to support the lies and distortions then and today is no different –he’s still there writing lies and distortions for the man that pays him.

The bottom line is; Andrew Bolt is paid directly to write propaganda that protects the non-renewable resources interests of his boss Rupert Murdoch and Murdoch’s associates. It’s as simple as that no matter what way Bolt cares to spin it.

Monday, August 05, 2013

Neoconservatives have quickly jumped on the ‘al Qaeda is still a threat’ bandwagon after the weekend’s shutdown of many Western embassies throughout North Africa and the Middle East due, so we are told, to as yet unexplained and unspecified threat chatter between various so-called ‘al Qaeda’ groups.

For an organisation that is said to be in terminal decline, al-Qaeda will draw immense satisfaction from the events of this past weekend, when it demonstrated its ability to disrupt the work of Western governments by forcing the temporary closure of dozens of diplomatic missions throughout the Arab world.

Coughlin concedes that he has no idea what the threat is; only that “American intelligence officials are convinced that al-Qaeda is planning a spectacular attack to mark the festival of Eid, which comes at the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan” (Thursday 8 August 2013).

Coughlin takes the opportunity to expand the propaganda by mentioning ‘al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula’ and referring to it as an “al Qaeda franchise”.

There are, it seems, a number of ‘al Qaeda franchises’ scattered around the broader region. Neoconservative writers are keen to mention them often in their various articles as they perpetuate the al Qaeda myth as being some kind of homogenous organisation that is well disciplined and structured and operating via a central ‘head office’ based somewhere in Afghanistan/Pakistan.

News of al-Qaeda’s imminent demise was, it seems, greatly exaggerated… Far from going out of business, al-Qaeda has spread, via its regional affiliates, to North Africa (al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb), the Persian Gulf region (al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula), and Iraq and Syria (al-Qaeda in Iraq, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant).

For Boot, the objective of his article is two-fold; first, to perpetuate the myth of a vast Islamic extremist organisation determined to destroy America and Israel, and, two, to justify the existence of a massive US security network and, in particular, the importance of the work of the NSA. This, in turn, justifies a massive expenditure on the military and especially in the new science of robotic surveillance and remote and robotically controlled weapons all aimed at keeping the West and the US in particular, as top dogs in the superpower stakes.

Ever since 9/11, al Qaeda has become a useful label that can be attached to any Islamic enemy of the West regardless of whether or not any of them actually do have any connection to the tiny hard-core original organisation that clustered around Osama bin Laden up until his demise in December 2001. The Israelis even tried to create a bogus ‘al Qaeda in Palestine’ group – but they were soon exposed as fakes.

Makes you wonder about the origins of the other groups. And, of course, if they’re such a tightly organised group, how come they’re fighting among themselves in Syria – and how come the most sophisticated ‘terror’ plot since several airliners were used to attack targets on 9/11 has been some bloke who tried to blow up his Y-fronts?

The best argument I’ve yet seen for bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities imminently is a chilling new report from the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) saying that by the middle of next year, Iran will have reached “critical capability”–the ability to build a nuclear bomb completely undetected.

A look, however, at the ISIS report she refers to reveals no hard evidence whatsoever that supports the claim that Iran has a program to build a nuclear weapon; only that Iran is increasing the speed at which it can enrich uranium to the levels needed to produce electrical power and medical isotopes. Nowhere is there any actual evidence that Iran is using its enrichment facilities to enrich uranium to levels required to produce a nuclear weapon. Nor, incidentally, does the report recommend military action despite the insinuations made in it about the possibility of Iran being able to produce weapons grade uranium if it wanted to.

One of the authors of the report, David Albright, is the same David Albright who insisted that Saddam Hussein was on the verge of a nuclear breakthrough just prior to the West’s invasion and destruction of Iraq. In fact, as I documented at this blog back in 2010, Albright has been scaremongering about both Saddam’s and Iran’s nuclear weapons and the possibility that they will have weapons in ‘just a few months time’ for years.

Meanwhile, Commentary’s leading propagandist, Jonathan Tobin, pushes the neoconservative line from a slightly different angle. He wants Congress to go ahead with a full embargo on all Iranian oil – a move that Iran is likely to consider as being an act of war. It was exactly the kind of provocation that started America’s war against Japan only instead of halting oil leaving, it stopped oil being supplied. Japan considered it an act of war and retaliated by attacking Pearl Harbor. Contrary to what most, but not all, American historians will tell you, the attack was not in the least bit surprising.

It’s not a matter of ‘if’ the US and/or Israel attack Iran, it’s a matter of when. The neocons would rather it sooner than later.

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is an Aeronautical Engineer, Historian and general carer of what goes on in the world.
Apart from an earlier career in engineering, Lataan also has a First Class Honours BA degree in History and a PhD in International Politics.
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